


Carry You Home

by Yrindor



Series: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics 2017 Fills [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 07:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12316146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrindor/pseuds/Yrindor
Summary: No one expected Asahi to survive the war.  Noya was determined to prove them wrong.





	Carry You Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 3. The prompt was the song "Battle Scars" by Paradise Fears.

When the war first starts, everyone expects it to be short-lived. They take only those who want to go, sending them off with great fanfare just before the spring planting begins.

Everyone expects them to return by midsummer at the latest, but despite several more waves of fighters who volunteer their services, the war drags on. When midsummer finally comes, word back from the front is growing desperate. They need every body that can be spared.

It's in the final wave that Asahi is sent. He knows it's coming, but he stays in his fields until the very end; it's not until two soldiers come for him in person that he lays down his hoe and lets them give him a spear instead. It's a clear sign of how desperate things have become. Asahi is tall, a looming presence who will fight fiercely for things he cares about, but he doesn't care about the war, and he wasn't made for fighting. They need him desperately, but even if he survives the battlefields, no one expects him to come back alive.

They send Noya with him. Noya doesn't care about the war, but he cares about Asahi. He's given one task before he leaves: bring Asahi home. No one says it out loud, but everyone knows.

Noya takes his duty seriously; he's not powerful the way Asahi is, but he's quick and lithe, darting into openings others don't see. It's an unusual pairing, but he and Asahi are a deadly combination on the battlefield. They fight back to back, and they're so used to each other's presence that they always find their way back together quickly, even if the fighting forces them apart.

It's not until after the battles that Noya truly makes good on his promise. He sends Asahi back to the camp to help with the horses and weapons while he joins in scouring the battlefield for the wounded, and those too wounded to be saved. When they set the guard schedules, Noya takes on extra shifts by the healers' tents so that Asahi's shifts can all be on the other side of the camp, away from the screams.

The battles drag on into autumn, but the end is finally in sight. Noya thinks they're finally going to make it home…until a crossbow bolt shatters Asahi's shin. The enemy surrenders later that day, but that's too late to Noya. He helps Asahi to the healers, and he knows he'll never forget the way Asahi screams as the surgeon amputates his leg at the knee. Or worse, the way Asahi falls into breathless gasps when the pain gets to be too much even for that.

But Noya brings Asahi home in the end, Asahi's arm slung over his shoulder as they come around the final bend to the fields Asahi loves. Everyone in the village is gentle with Asahi as he heals—almost too gentle, Noya thinks, for he's seen Asahi in battle, and he knows Asahi is far less fragile than people assume.

It's not until Asahi is well down the path to recovery that the war begins to catch up to Noya. Once he's home, and safe, and no longer worrying about two lives every day, all of the horrors he pushed aside at the front start creeping back. It's not the obvious things that get to him either; those he can prepare for or avoid. It's the little, seemingly innocuous things that catch him off guard without warning.

Someone asks him to help search for a lost lamb, and suddenly he's back on the battlefield searching for their local guide. The rain hides her tracks, but Noya finally finds her on the game trail by the cliffs. She has her hands pressed to a dark stain on her stomach, and Noya knows at a glance that the wound is fatal; no one survives the infection that inevitably sets in.

The guide smiles and whispers her thanks when Noya finds her, and Noya thinks he deserves none of that gratitude. She's still smiling as he draws his dagger, and the last traces of a smile are still lingering on her lips when Noya pushes her body into the river below.

He comes back to himself shaking and breathless and at a loss for words. Luckily, Asahi is there with him and offers to help with the search in Noya's stead. Asahi may not have been _there_ that day, but he was in the war, so he understands.

Another day, the town is celebrating as they raise a new barn to help winter the livestock. It's foggy, and the voices and clatter drown out everything else. Noya's mind throws him back into the army camp without warning, to a day when the hammering from the smiths let the enemy creep up unnoticed in the fog and ambush them.

Noya withdraws more after that, effectively moving into Asahi's house and rarely venturing back down into the rest of the village. Asahi was there with him, so Asahi understands, but no one else can. No matter how bad the day, Asahi is always there as a steady, reassuring presence despite the lingering demons of his own. He doesn't receive any of the public recognition Noya did, but they both know that his role is just as valuable, and as thankless.

Noya may have carried Asahi home from the war, but it's Asahi who carries Noya through the peace that follows.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and feedback welcome and appreciated.


End file.
